Send "Various Artists " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Rollingstones |
 If it had all been sunshine and clockwork, with a tidy profit on the morning after, no one would have said another word. Instead, the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, held August 15th to 17th, 1969, near Bethel, New York — a refugee-camp experience officially declared a state disaster area on the second day — became an anniversary industry.And business is booming. In addition to these six new releases, the 1970 documentary, Woodstock, is out as a deluxe DVD set. The 1970 soundtrack and its 1971 sequel, Woodstock Two, are back on CD. Then there are the books, replica tchotchkes and commemorative events, mostly drawing on an artfully massaged memory of that weekend's accidental wonder: That amid the frozen traffic, stressed food and medical services, and oceanic mud, "Half a million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music — and have nothing but fun and music!" as the late Max Yasgur, the farmer who welcomed the horde on his land, said from the stage on Sunday morning....full text |
| Uncut |
| Perhaps the most over-used remark in popular culture is “If you can remember the 1960s, you weren’t there.” Three Days Of Peace And Music, an event whose title has over the succeeding 40 years been contracted, simply, to “Woodstock”, turns that idea on its head. If you were one of the half a million there, or the countless millions more who weren’t, this is a historical event so abundantly filmed and recorded, that everyone down the generations since has their own memories and experiences of three days where, in upstate New York, brotherhood was fleetingly, and muddily, approximated. Maybe not physically, perhaps – but in a way, we were all there. Warm fellow-feeling aside (and there is a surfeit of that here, from Chip Monck and John Morris’ stage announcements, to the classic psychedelic/folk-rock that predominates) Woodstock was an event by which an artist could be measured. The sets that bands played there, and – crucially – whether these sets were included in Michael Wadleigh’s headspinning documentary, could make or break a career....full text |
| Allmusic |
| In a year filled with them, Rhino offers its own homage to Woodstock's 40th anniversary by rolling out this lavish six-CD box set. It can be argued that this is merely a cash-in, but a number of things should be considered when critically looking at a set of this size, covering one of the most important events in rock music history. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this set is that it contains tracks by almost every single artist who appeared on the Woodstock stage in their proper sequence. (The exceptions are the Band and Ten Years After, the Keef Hartley Bandas well as the introductory speech by Swami Satchidananda.) The reason for this is simple: Imagine the nightmarish lisencing process the set's compilers and producers had to go through to make this happen. This challenges the assertion of the original soundtrack recording. We also hear from artists such as Sweetwater, Tim Hardin, Johnny Winter, Mountain, Ravi Shankar Quill, the Incredible String Band, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Joe Cocker, and Blood, Sweat & Tears, and, of course, stage announcements by Chip Monck, John Morris, and Wavy Gravy. In presenting a historical document of this proportion there are some interesting judgment calls to make. Producers Andy Zax, Mason Williams, and Cheryl Pawleski researched the original set lists exhaustively and present them here along with the music and their choices. This is terrific not only because we can "see" what we're missing, but because those of us who aren't necessarily rock historians will finally know. The sound, which was done by Zax and mastering engineer Dave Schultz, is as good as it can possibly get. The book is a monster, loaded with photos and featuring Bud Scoppa's wonderfully researched and presented liner essay, whose chapters account for each day, act by act....full text |
Various Artists lyrics
